Thursday, January 15, 2009

When does not enough become too much?

For some crazy reason, ever since Taylor was born it has been bugging me about whether or not I want to have any more kids. Right now, I am almost 100% sure that I want to stop with our two girls. When Carly was a baby, there was a time when we considered just having one. We worried about how much we loved Carly and if we'd ever be able to have enough love for another child. Then we started to worry about her growing up alone. Now we have our beautiful Taylor and our reasons for possibly not having more are slightly very different. Now I worry about not having time for a third and about being so stressed out that I become the "yelling all the time" mom and not enjoying the time I spend with Carly and Taylor. I know right now we are in the thick of the most stressful times...an infant, little sleep, and a preschooler still in the midst of major temper tantrums. So, before we do anything permanent, we have decided to wait a few years. We wouldn't wait to wait more than 2 years again so then we'll know for sure. (To be honest, the only reason I really have for maybe wanting another is so Andrew can have a son. He tells me this is not a problem at all, but I worry he's missing out. You don't get to know the gender beforehand, so this is DEFINITELY not a good reason to keep having children unless you are ok with possibly ending up with another girl.)

So, this leads to me the question of "When does not enough become too much?" Family and friends laugh when I tell them we'll probably stop where we are. We heard a lot of "try one more time for a boy" over the Christmas holidays. But let's say we had one more, a girl, would people keep saying that? When do you get to the point where people start thinking you have too many kids?? Families like the Duggars (http://www.duggarfamily.com/) are rare and you hear a lot of comments about the number of children they have. Do you think anyone ever tells them, "you should have just one more"?

I love my girls and would be happy having just the two of them the rest of my life. I loved being pregnant and the excitement of it (even when I was spending most of the first trimester leaning over the toilet ;) ). It makes me sad to think that may never happen again, but as far as having children, I'm ok.

So what do you think? Will I think back to this one day and laugh, while I'm holding my 3rd child? :) God has plans for me and I am trying to keep my mind open to what he wants for us.

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